


tableau vivant

by noiselesspatientspider



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Photography, Post-First War with Voldemort, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3604842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiselesspatientspider/pseuds/noiselesspatientspider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus spends hours searching for the photo. He remembers it perfectly, the image: Sirius leaning over him, hands braced on the floor, just breathing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tableau vivant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malapropism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/gifts).



Remus spends hours looking for the photo. James took it, the summer after seventh year, when Sirius had just finagled Remus into sharing a flat. They were moving in, and Sirius had tackled him to the floor for no apparent reason. He remembers it perfectly, the image: Sirius leaning over him, hands braced on the floor, just breathing. White light streaming onto the visible side of Sirius’ face, picking out the sharp lines of his cheekbones and his precipitous nose.

He is meant to be packing up Sirius’ things. He can’t afford their flat anymore. Whether by guilt, or obligation, or sheer bloody-minded bureaucratic incompetence, the key to Sirius’ Gringotts vault appeared by Ministry owl a week ago, but Remus has never been able to touch silver, thirty pieces or no.

He has to be out of the flat in two days, but every time he runs his hands over the detritus of their life he cuts himself on a sweater, or a record (was he already lying, when he bought that pair of boots? when we found that curry place, had he sold James and Lily and Harry yet?) So Remus rifles through old photographs instead, ones where there is yet no danger, careful not to let his fingers linger.

It is nearly four in the afternoon, the sun already surrendering its weak yellow belly, when he finds it. He unbends from his crouch over yet another cardboard box to look at it in better light, because something is wrong with the picture. It isn’t right; that wasn’t how it happened. He knows. He remembers. The photograph he is holding is so dull, so brown. It might almost be Muggle in its frozen stiffness; Sirius’ scratchy plaid shirt lies in uncomfortable silence next to their riotous carpet, his wrist contorted around Remus’ waist. The light Remus remembers so vividly is completely subsumed by the camera’s flash (dammit, James, he thinks, I’ve told you to turn that blasted thing off, and his breath hitches.) And Sirius’ face, Sirius’ beloved, damnable, traitor face, is unrecognizable, upside-down.

Remus has been having dreams, lately. Sirius comes back. Sirius comes back, and he isn’t in Azkaban, and he isn’t the traitor, it wasn’t him, and Remus forgets. They are sitting at Lily and James’ table, having roast. He forgets he can’t touch, he’s not allowed to touch, he goes to take him into his arms, and Sirius explodes into dust.

He hates the dreams. They're horrible and clichéd and gut him every time anyway, and he can’t remember Sirius’ face except in pieces anymore. He has the curve of his lips, the light through his ear, but he doesn’t know how they connect. Maybe, Remus thinks bitterly, he is clutching at the jawline, the crinkle of his brow, the glint of his eyes, trying to hold the man himself together. Maybe if he gets the light just right, he can put the pieces back in a way that makes sense. A way that doesn’t end like this.

He looks at photograph-Sirius’ eyes, trying to read love, or betrayal, or anything at all in their depths. Sirius won’t turn to look at him, though; he has eyes only for photograph-Remus, that foolish naïve bastard who curls happily into his lover’s side. Sirius runs his long-fingered hands over Remus’ waist, those hands that did-- what? Remus doesn’t know, anymore.

He thought the older photographs would be safer, that he wouldn’t keep looking for clues. He wants to burn them all. Maybe if he just leaves everything in this apartment, and locks the door, and walks away, Mrs. Rawlinson, his Muggle landlady, will leave it locked. Maybe then he can finally lose the way Sirius’ jaw curved into his shoulder. Then no one will remember at all, and then--

Oh, this is foolish. Plenty of people still remember Sirius; Andromeda, and Hagrid, and Mad-Eye, and Sturgis, and Kingsley, and bloody Dumbledore have not completely forgotten the man’s existence just because Remus is seized with a self-indulgent fit of melancholy.

He stands up and closes the box, brushing the resulting puff of dust off his trousers. He will put everything in boxes, he decides, and all the boxes into Sirius' Gringotts vault. Then he will not have to look at any of it ever again. He will go somewhere he can ignore Hagrid’s owls, and Emmeline’s offers of tea and books, and Minerva’s too-sharp kindnesses. He will travel, and he will begin his long slow slide into the vast fathoms of the unremembered dead.

The box goes in the far wall, under the window, and Remus allows himself a minute on the floor next to it, the ridges of his spine shuddering against the wall. Then he gets up, and he makes a cup of tea, and he goes into the bedroom to pack away Sirius’ shirts. One arm over, then the other. Fold. Fold. Smooth. Breathe. Step forward, step forward. Fold. Fold. Breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> "Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead." -- Roland Barthes, _Camera Lucida_
> 
> I was thinking about wizarding photography (thanks, [malapropism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/pseuds/malapropism)) and we read Barthes in class (if you have a spare few hours, read _Camera Lucida_ , it's very short and very worth it) and this just sort of happened. I blame Barthes for all of my abuse of punctuation. (Also, I just realized that a solid half of my fics are now about grief, haha, haha, oops.) 
> 
> As usual, concrit welcome. Also please come talk to me about wizarding art.


End file.
